I’m From New York

so it’s no wonder I don’t like to feel small. Like street trash or subway rats or anything besides the skyscrapers that live inside me. It’s a wonder, I think, to have made it so far while squeezing in my vastness so tight. Sucking in the uncomfortable parts. Making sure there’s not an ounce of me unaccounted for.

I have been writing about mirrors a lot and I think that’s no mistake. How I can see myself in them now. Have some clarity after lifting all this weight from my shoulders. Let myself let go. Force myself to move forward. Finally meet my own eyes and muster up the courage to call these things for what they are.

And I have been crying for what feels like four years. Laughing too, running like hell. Making my way over and under bad decisions. Flipping the script so I can make sense of the scenes. My God, what a whirlwind it has been to ignore myself for all this time. To have played the questions in my head so loud and so long that I’ve wound up sick.

Is this what happens to women when they unravel? This metaphorical awakening that makes our blood boil up until we are hissing with rage for the time we’ve spent silent? Is this what happens when we are bare and afraid and the world can finally see us? Are we pretty then, to the naked eye? Do we turn it on? Light it up like we do when we are dimming our own?

What if we’ve been taught to stay quiet because they’ve discovered our voices blow things up. Make space for the truth. Hold up those mirrors I can’t stop speaking into existence.

What if we’ve been taught to take just enough and not one inch more because they’ve found when we get cut off at the waist we still grow gardens. What if we are not the problem. Then how do we explain the ways we’ve let ourselves get walked over all these years?

The day every woman opens her mouth will be the day that heaven starts to sing. The sky will open and give us what we’ve been begging for it to give. Every door will slam open. Every war will find peace. Mountains will move. Music will play. And we will find ourselves, finally, praying to the women. Praising to the women. Asking to forgive what took us so long.